Retired Taiwanese professor Shih Cheng-ping (施正屏) has reportedly been imprisoned in Beijing for national security reasons after disappearing in China in August last year, members of his family said.
Shih, who in February last year retired from National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of International Human Resource Development, became chief economist for China’s Huaxia Group (華夏集團) and frequently traveled between Taiwan and China.
He was a member of a prolocalization group within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and served as the agriculture and trade representative to the US under former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
An acquaintance of Shih said that Shih last contacted him on the Line messaging app in July last year and that Shih’s Facebook page stopped being updated in the same month.
Asked about Shih’s whereabouts, his wife simply said that he had gone on a trip, the source said.
When Shih did not attend his daughter’s spring graduation in the US, people began to worry, because Shih was especially fond of his daughter, the source said.
Family members had refused to contact the Straits Exchange Foundation, but when the foundation called to inquire about Shih’s status, they said that he was conducting research in China, the source said.
Although Shih’s friends had their own opinions about how his family should handle the situation, they deferred to the family, the source added.
Private inquiries were made through business acquaintances in China, and the military and national security agencies in Beijing responded that Shih is being held in Beijing for national security reasons, the source said, adding that they told him: “It is best not to poke around too much about Shih’s detention.”
The source said he believed that Shih disappeared because of two opinion pieces that he wrote for the Chinese-language China Times, in which he talked about People’s Liberation Army (PLA) generals being targeted for shuanggui (雙規), an abolished internal process the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection used to discipline party members.
As China had not sent notification of any detention, the Mainland Affairs Council yesterday said that inquiries have been made through Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau.
The foundation yesterday said it would continue to monitor the case and that it would provide Shih’s family members with any needed assistance.
In September, Shih Chien University chair professor Chiang Min-chin (江岷欽) said on Jaw Shaw-kong’s (趙少康) political talk show that Southern Taiwan Union of Cross-strait Relations Associations chairman Tsai Chin-shu (蔡金樹) had been arbitrarily detained in China — at that time, for 420 days.
Since May 2016, there have been 149 cases of Taiwanese going missing after visiting China, with 101 cases resolved and 48 still pending resolution, according to foundation statistics.
Of the 67 people that were missing as of September, 19 cases have been resolved, with the people having returned home.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS